#TheAction: The Trifecta Bet

05.03.2016

Basic Action: Hitting a trifecta bet requires players to correct select the first three finishers in any given race. The bettor can either play the trifecta straight (not recommended) or box the horses. When a bet is boxed, the horses selected can come in any order. So, if you like the No. 3, No. 4 and No. 6 horse in a given race, you could box them in a trifecta. If those three horses finish in the top three positions (in any order), you’ve got a winning ticket. Another way to bet a trifecta is with a “key”, which is a betting strategy we’ll get to soon in #TheAction.

Advanced Action: The trifecta bet can be extremely rewarding and they regularly pay out in excess of $1,000 for a $2 base bet. On the flipside, trifectas can be extremely difficult to hit. When you begin to study the races, your first challenge will be identifying the horse who is most likely to win. Once you’ve become comfortable with the process of finding winners, you might explore exactas (selecting the first two finishers in the race). But predicting which horse might finish third is often dependent on way too many factors for anyone to be able to accurately project.

Boxing your selections is a necessity. Adding a fourth horse to your trifecta box ticket will increase your chances of hitting it (you’ll only need three of the four selected horses to finish in the first three positions) but the ticket will cost you four times as much as trifecta box with three horses. In an effort to cut down the overall cost of your ticket and to increase your chances of hitting a trifecta, we’ll take a look at the “key” strategy in an upcoming edition of #TheAction.